Late night study blues. Don't even read.

Good evening all. It's getting late. I've pumped my brain with some caffiene at 9:00 so I know I could stick it out for another couple of hours and still be just fine in class tomorrow without wearing myself out.

I shouldn't be worried about wearing myself out anyway, tomorrow's Friday and there isn't even a finite midterm exam. That's going to be next Thursday. For our last chapter we've been working on very introductory statistics. Note to self: (Note to any of my readers, skip this useless crap)

We're using median, range and mean in a set of values. With these values we can find the Z score and standard deviations from the mean the point is located. There is a formula to get the variance which you take the square root of to get the Standard deviation of a sample. The formula is Sum of X squared (so add together all X values after squaring them)-(Sum of X*Sum of X (or sum of X squared)/n) (number in sample i.e. "10 consecutive nights) ALL divided by n-1. So number in the sample-1. If the values in a set of data is mound-shaped, 68% of values in the data set are between X bar- S (sample mean-1 standard deviation) and x bar+1. 
Empirical rule: Approximately 95% of the values between X bar - 2 S (sample mean and 2 standard deviations from the mean). Virtually all data is between 3 standard deviations of the mean. This has to do with Chebyshev's Theorem. This rule provides a quick way to approximate a standard deviation. Because all data is within 3 standard deviations on either side of the mound shape, or within 3 standard deviations of the mean, the span of the range between the largest and smallest point should be about six standard deviations from the mean. Take the largest value minus the smallest value, but then you must figure out what to divide by. In the last case we would use six because there's 6 standard deviations, but this only works with sample sizes over 200 for some reason. So n >/ 200, Range/6= Range Approximation for S. 50</n</199=Range/5. 16</n</49=Range/4, N</15=Range/sqrRt N. This is to get the value S, which is the sample standard deviation. When you are just given a set of values you can still find the variance which can then be converted to the standard deviation by using the formula Sum x^2 (add together all X values after squaring them)-(Sum of X*Sum of X/n))/n-1 N being the number in the sample given. You can get percentages for probability frequency by dividing the total in the sample that correspond to each value divided by the total number of values (typically given in problem. i.e. 52 sizes of jerseys total and your looking at the set of values for 15 of them selected randomly)

And THAT... is what I've learned over the past few days of studying this stuff. I'm still two days behind. Luckily, because there's no "midterm" tomorrow I've got some time to get caught up. The test tomorrow should just be over what I just described to you, and nothing in later sections that he's gone over the past few days but have me completely lost. I can't skip econ tomorrow like I have the past couple fridays. I've got a quiz tomorrow.

I'm also lucky that the quiz is on chapter 10. Here it is 11:16 and if I get in a solid hour on this, make up some flash cards to take with me in the morning and sneak them in English.. I should be golden. I should also exercise tonight. I feel like I've been so stressed out lately that I've been eating more. Food just tastes good to me lately, and the last time I went grocery shopping I got a sufficient amount of delicious munchies that have me going through my cabinets more frequently.

I'd like to keep this picture for later. I posted it to facebook today as well. Look at that, all the guitar shapes. I intend to own at least one of all of them someday, is that wild? He he he. What guitarist does not fantasize about having an extraordinary collection? 

I also had to revise and write up a works cited page for first English arguement paper. I think it's pretty good. I didn't really utilize the articles as much as I stated my personal opinions on the matter based on common knowledge.. which I hope she won't mark me off for. Really the only thing I used the articles for was for the studies.

I've been working very hard today to have the ability to see Abe tomorrow and be able to relax with him for awhile, as well as go to a bonfire I got invited too. I also intend to practice my guitar, of course. Jake gave me this sick new song tonight. It sounds so cool, guys, it's going to be a challenge. 

This is the song, 

J.S. Bach Invention No. 8 in F Major

 Apparently this is "Neo-classical"

So I've still got this economics to study. I don't want to do it. At 12:30 I'm going to bed whether I feel like it or not cause if I stay up later than that my whole day will be groggy tomorrow.

peace. 

Being 16 nostalgia and delicious ihop

Good... night, everyone. It's late, for me especially, to be talking to you on a weeknight. 

To be honest I used to be a night owl. I used to get such exhilaration logging into Neopets and Gaiaonline late into the night and making internet world advancements that didn't relate to my real life goings on. Thank God for Gaia, haha. I no longer play that site what-so-ever. It's a forum site that you post and earn virtual "Gold" that you can buy stuff with to put on your avatar. Sound lame? 

There was actually a lot more to it. Man, seeing this screenshot really takes me back. Most of the time spent on Gaia is utilized in the forums. Whether your spamming, answering surveys to earn gold, doing polls, roleplaying, whatever. I really enjoyed that website.

Okay, fun side memory for you guys. I've decided that I need to start writing my old memories from time to time because you never know when you might forget these. As I can feel my brain hardening to so much nonsensical business knowledge I feel myself forgetting the small details of the past that I used to be able to so readily recall. When I write old memories I will try to bold them so that those of you that are reading don't feel like reading this, well, then you can skip it. 

Who the hell would want to read these, I have no idea. But those of you out there-- hi!!

Anyway.

This story is called: How I found Gaia Online

I was in middle school. Katelynn and I were hanging out together on an every other weekend basis when we were in 7th grade. She had a confusing life with divorced parents and I only got the opportunity to hang out with her every other weekend when she was with her Mom. She of course spent her schooldays with her Mom and her Dad spent time with her every other weekend. Her Dad was dating a chick named Kelly who had two daughter's over a span of about three years with Kelly. 

Katelynn wouldn't get to talk to me much when she was at her Dad's house, because when she was there was either going out to eat with her Dad or watching over the havoc of Kelly's house. I remember going there once. It was a light blue house that was sort of messy because it was a very busy house. Katelynn's two step brothers Keiton and Cody and her stepsister Casey all lived with Katelynn's Dad and there Mom Kelly during the week and would sometimes be with their Dad.

Anyway, for the most part when I'd hang out with Katelynn it was either at her house or my house every other weekend. It was always a huge treat for me to see her because middle school was quite sucky. I felt really insecure about myself for the most part, but I suppose we all do in middle school. It wasn't until 8th grade that I started to pull out of that insecurity when I was taking Paxil. 

At some point in the 8th grade, Katelynn and I got in a fight and did not talk for awhile. This was the summer before going into highschool that I was spending almost all of my time with Katharine, RJ, Toren, Damien, Bean... whoever else was hanging out at the skatepark. We thought we were quite legit at the time. We'd go on bus rides over to Richland to watch them skateboard around in circles.

The internet is great. Scrolling through my old photobucket albums I see so much personal growth and maturity in myself. All these things that I created for my online movies with random pictures I didn't own from google image search. I guess that hasn't changed much.

Wow, I think of how insecure I was when that picture was taken. I was probably about 16. Okay, I know the duck face is inexcusable but I look cute. I can't believe I sincerely thought I wasn't good enough for these turds at my school that didn't typically approach me. Probably because I was a little intimidating. Or because I acted rather bizarrely. That's my thing, I was always a little bizarre  behaving because of my interest in drawing anime and online roleplay, neopets and pokemon. 

Anyway Katelynn introduced me to Gaiaonline and I had a blast doing all the events and earning all the gold I could for different items. It was a time consuming project. I don't even want you guys to read the captions for the above screenshot. I'm quite clearly trying to somehow cover up for the fact that I'm really taking Gaia "prom crashers" screenshots for people and giving them away as photos. I was drawing attention to myself in the event like "photo booth" photo booth!" Lol then in all the pictures I sent back to them my avatar was in the picture. 

I was so incredibly self absorbed. Here let me take your avatar's picture! 

I send it to them and is has a picture of the back of my avatar in the picture, hahahaha.I have no idea why I find this so funny. Maybe because I know that in MY mind I really thought "that person will LOVE it, what a chance to be in a photo with my awesome camera man avatar." Lol also lovely kiss in the corner. 

2008... Damn lets see that was, five years ago. I was 16. Yeah that would make sense. This was really at the height of my gaia posting/hoarding avatar item days. I even bought a couple monthly collectables. Again it was just a nice escape from the real world. 

So there's a little about that. The story of how I found Gaia online. I hope recording these memories can someday give me feels. 

peace. 

Look I'm Becky Katsopolis, hahaha

Check out my 90's Full House look today. 

Just kidding. I actually didn't intend to style my hair this way. Surprise surprise! It's actually due to barely straightening it this morning, then pulling my bangs out of my eyes continually while I work on homework.

All day I've been munching out. I'm planning on working out tonight because of it. Like literally there's no excuse for all the crap I ate. Belgian waffles, steak, mashed potatos, teddy grahams, cereal, a freaking bacon sandwich this morning... I don't eat as little as I might look. I try to eat as healthy as I can, but when I go grocery shopping and there's lots of accessible food a few steps away from my bedroom it's almost hard to resist. Right now I'm drinking a protein shake. It's been about four hours since I ate dinner and had a big sugar spike when I had those Belgian waffles for dessert. Those were a whopping 400 calories, not to mention the fact that I put peanut butter on top. I've unintentionally had a TON of protein today, I'm pumped to work out and burn some of this off once I finish this entry.

Uh let's see. Today was Monday. We're down to the last two weeks of classes, not counting finals week. That makes me giddy, I'm always excited for the quarter to be over. I feel like 4 more weeks of this I wouln't be able to maintain the grades I have. Or maybe I would... I would just be very, very burnt out to the point of no return. I love the quarter system.

I got an 8 on my finite math quiz. I'm very happy about this because I thought I'd done poorly. I think he might have cut me some slack because I came to his office and got help. That or the rest of the class did more poorly than I thought and mine was significantly better for getting the probability distributions what so ever. I was having an off day, too. The girl that sits next to me that's also one of the top students in class has been pretty entertaining to chit chat with every so often. She's very quiet but I can tell she gets sarcasm so I can joke around with her and not feel like she thinks I'm weird. 

I talked to Jessie briefly today when I mentioned how long until our next test in Econ. It's so weird, we don't talk at all anymore. I don't care, she's so normal, she's boring to me. 

I texted Abe last night after he didn't respond to one of my texts like, what is this? If you don't want to talk to me anymore just tell me. Something along those lines. He told me he's just not very proactive about checking or writing text messages. I'm not going to lie and say this hasn't been frustrating for me over the past two weeks because we practically never text anymore. We would only text a few messages back and forth in the past but now unless I instigate it we do not text. That is annoying. 

I think he got the memo though that it bothers me. He still wants to spend time together. When and if that will actually happen here in the next week or so I have no clue. 

Alrighty then, time to work out.

peace.

..Flat. Out. Not talking to me now...?

Today's been uneventful.

Though successful enough I suppose. After I get done writing I'm going to do none other than (drumroll) play guitar and watch NETFLIX! Wooo!! Yeah I really haven't played much guitar today, nor did I study econ like I'd intended. I did study about an hour friday and saturday though so it makes up for it I suppose. 

As hard as this is to admit to you guys because I hate seeming like I need a man for anything... I've really had a hard time focusing today because I've been thinking about Abe. We haven't hung out together in two weeks. Caring this much about seeing him is a good sign... for Abe, that is if he actually wants to continue spending time together or not. I feel like he's barely been texting me because he doesn't know when to break it to me or something if he's not interested. We just haven't been texting hardly at all. He either doesn't respond to my texts or takes hours to reply. For said reason, and the fact that we haven't hung out for weeks, makes me think he's reconsidering spending time with me. 

I have three weeks left of classes before finals week. I'm so happy that I do not have a final in econ or in finite. The only final for English that I'm aware of is my research paper that I'm doing on exotic animal ownership and how it should be illegal in all states. I'm HOPING I'll be able to find recent articles on the issue. I need at least 2 that were published in 2013. That's only 2 months of articles. 

So I might even be lucky enough to get an extra week of spring break if I don't have any finals! That would be sick, I'm excited to get all my shiz packed and go home. 

peace. 

Learning more about the system.

Haven't much felt like writing.

Today I didn't have the best luck. I woke up with no plans and ended the day with no plans, which is never a good day on a Saturday. I did get some studying done and practiced for about an hour. Not great but my hands needed a break today.

Allie told me she wanted to come with me grocery shopping today when I told her what I had planned. Not particularly exciting. She told me she'd let me know when she was done at the gym and we'd go. Well around 6:00 she got back and took a shower and didn't feel like going. Ha ha I'm not surprised, who the hell would want to walk around a grocery store in circles with me when they just worked out for two hours? I was flattered that she wanted to go in the first place, so I used it as an excuse to sit around and watch documentaries about drugs all day.

That sort of creeped me out. I learned about some really scary drugs in Russia and Columbia. Heroin, meth, crack cocaine, painkillers, broken families... All things I'm going to avoid thinking about for the next few days. Drugs create such a horrible reality for people and destroy everything. I made a promiss to myself early on that those types of drugs are completely out of the question. I would never, ever try any of them. I am fortunate enough that I don't have any need to escape reality. I look at the horrible circumstances these poor people involved with drug using families go through and I can see how they turn to drugs themselves. It's a horrible cycle in the predominantly lower castes of society but alcoholism and drug use certainly destroys middle and upper class people's lives too.

I don't know. I live my life with thought, caution and discipline to keep myself safe. I would never think to use a substance that could potentially jeopardize my wellbeing. Loving your life and yourself means using restraint and discipline to become the best person you can be. Now I'm not saying people should work 24/7 to be better than everyone around them but work their best to fulfill whatever it is they feel a need to do in life. Nobody aspires to be a junky. It's sad to say not everyone starts life with a realistic goal and end up falling into the wrong crowd of people.

I'm so lucky to have the parents that I did. So many of these poor people on Intervention had such awful upbringing. You cannot be a meth head and raise a child, there's just no way. Even if a parent cares about the children the constant pursuit of drugs doesn't leave much room for the love, attention and care their child needs. These children often get molested because of the inattentiveness of parents or end up using drugs themselves at ages as young as 12. Babies in drug addicted communities born addicted to crack or opiates. It's disgusting and sad.

But yeah I'm going to work out and go to bed. It's getting late. I really hope I get the opportunity to see a friend tomorrow because I felt really lonely today. I did call Katelynn today which was nice! I had a lot to talk about and just went on and on.

I really shouldn't complain because I've had a good last couple of days though. This was taken at a party that Allie invited me to come too. I've met Allie's roommates as well as her some of her close friends at CWU now. This picture might be taken of me and Allie but for most of the party I was standing around drinking my hard apple cider with those 3 rednecks standing behind us. Nah, they weren't bad rednecks, they were actually pretty funny and interesting to talk too.

I can remember one of them's name was Taylor and I was talking to him for longer than the others. I wasn't particularly interested in any of the guys there. I just like to drink my beer and get into conversations, get to know people, and watch the interesting bullshit unfold around me as people get more drunk. 

The few minutes that I did walk away from these guys I stood over by the sink and briefly talked to Allie's roommate's.... I want to say boyfriend, though it's not facebook official so I do not know if they just party together or what. It seems like that's kind of what college "relationships" are like. Nobody actually wants to tie down with anyone unless they find someone absolutely perfect because they want to keep their options open in case they DO find that person. So instead of actually dating people just find their favorite person to hook up, drink and party with. I get it now. 

And I guess some people just hook up with someone new every week at parties. That to me is kind of gross.  Last night there was one girl who was completely out of control. She was so wasted and actually grabbed the tall guy standing directly behind me's crotch. It was so bad, one of the guys paid this girl $5 to do it. After she did she kept following him around the room trying to grind on him. Note that she was kind of big, with skin tight clothes and f**ked up makeup. Just a complete trainwreck. 

It makes me sad to imagine how people get this way. So hopeless that they have to make themselves completely wasted to feel comfortable in their own skin. That's what it comes down too. Ugh, here I go talking about substance abuse again. I feel bad for poor Abe, he texts me today and we're making light conversation about the party and then all of a sudden I go into talking about how drugs are so terrible and blah dee blah.

Anyway Allie's roommate cut between this guy and I, and kept on eyeballing me all night. I mean I can understand why. She doesn't know me, I could be a complete bitch who likes to ruin things for people. There's a lot of girls that would take advantage of a situation if they're given the chance to snatch a guy from someone else. I just don't feel right about that. I just like meeting and talking to people; I was not interested in her boyfriend what so ever. But feeling as though I had intimidated someone made me feel a little empowered. It's become very effortless for me to talk to strangers, which will benefit me immensely in my professional life.

peace. 

By the skin of my teeth, I got a class.

I've had a pretty great day. Surprisingly enough, here we are toward the end of the quarter and this is usually when I'm the most stressed. I'm not that worried about this quarter because of my current circumstances. I've done pretty well on almost all of my tests and assignments in my three classes this quarter-- with the exception of the quiz I took today in English that I forgot to read for. BUT. I got 135/150 on my critique paper!! That's an A-. I'm so happy about that.

I got an 85% on my economics test. Another score. How well I've done in my classes was definitely because of how hard I worked this last week. This week I've been keeping up for the most part but because of this "double-Monday" (as my professor calls it, the day after a three day weekend and everybody feels like they're playing catch up. It's the truth) I've felt like this week is flying by.

Starbucks coffee cake. 

I had my regular coffee and coffee cake with Reina today at Starbucks. She told me for a second time today (I had forgot) that she's leaving after finals. I've had a nice time meeting with her every week. It's been a treat to learn even more about the Japanese culture; but more than anything it really did make life more tolerable when I first moved here and had nobody to talk too. I cooked myself my favorite lunch today as well.

Alright I've really got to get some more work done tonight. I studied with Matthew in the library from 3-5 today like I was assigned (even if the professor isn't making us prove that we're continuing to have these study groups or not) at the beginning of the quarter. It was good to get that done.

 I also lucked out today. I'm #1 on a wait list for a professional speaking class that I'm taking next quarter. Originally I was pretty sure I was taking technical writing but now I'm actually happy that I'm in that speech class. Reason being it will almost definitely take less time to do assignments for that class than for my technical writing class and I need all the time I can get with how difficult statistics is going to be. I think next quarter could potentially be my hardest quarter to date.

I'm not saying professional speaking is a class I'm super excited for, but I am just happy that I'm going to be taking a class to inch me closer to my goal of graduation. I have to take a full credit load in order to continue receiving my student loans, which means if I had not gotten this class I would have had to take a class I didn't need. Could you imagine how hard it would be to study for a class that meant nothing?

With my CBC classes I used to always make a check-list of my current progress and with Winter quarter coming to a close I'll show you guys where I'm at:

Business Degree, total 100 credits. 

Pre-Requisite Requirements (pre-admission)
Done:
-Accounting 251 (Winter 2012), 3.4, 5 cred
-Accounting 252 (Fall 2012), 3.0, 5 cred
-Legal Environment of Business (Fall 2012), 3.3, 5 cred
-Pre-Calculus (Fall 2012), 3.0, 5 cred

Total: 20 credits

Current: 
-Econ 201 (Winter 2013)
-Finite Math (Winter 2013)
-English 102 (Winter 2013)

Marginal credits: 15
Total: 35 credits

Spring 2013:
-Econ 202
-Bus 241. Introductory Business Statistics
-Com 345, Professional Speaking

Total: 50 credits

Thus completing half of my total 100 credits at the end of my Junior year. 

This would not have happened had I not done some research today. I actually realized I had made some dumb mistakes while using safari and kept on thinking all the classes were completely closed and full when I would accidently look at "Winter 2013"s stuff. Why would that be the automatic option on the drop down list? It bogs the whole system up.

Oh well, it all worked out. 

Being #1 on a wait list is pretty much a guarantee that you're going to be in the class. Someone always drops and most professors are willing to squeeze in just one more person in an already full class.

Okay talk to you later guys.

peace.

Teaching, and more on Prozac

Evening everyone. 

Today's been a pretty good day for a number of reasons. It's always a good day when my work pays off. Last week I managed to break up my studying into multiple days and it really paid off when I took my midterm today. I think I did pretty well, out of the 50 questions there was only a few that I was pretty unsure about. I even corrected a couple dumb mistakes so that was good.

I usually don't review my answers after I take a test. The reason being is that I know that if I do so I'll end up second guessing myself and more likely than not changes a good answer into a bad one. Therefore it's wiser for me to not look over the test. I didn't expect the econ test to be this morning because I'd wrote Wednesday on my calendar. I luckily did study this weekend so I think it paid off.

Also, I got a 9.5/10 on my finite test. I'm really stoked about that because that means I'm actually getting this material. The probability stuff can be so difficult to wrap your head around for some reason. I'm still managing to keep up considerably well in a class I thought would be a nightmare for me. I'm not looking forward to Statistics at all. I want to take a guitar class but there doesn't appear to be much offered. It's a shame they cut the guitar program a couple years ago.

I didn't make many changes to my synthesis that I printed out tonight. I thought the paper was really good to begin with. I'm not looking forward to getting my critique back tomorrow, yet I'm not worried about it. English 102 is a prerequisite to Technical writing, which I'm going to try to get into tomorrow. I'm going to go apply for my major tomorrow. 

I had my second lesson with Hassan this evening! It was so exciting to see his improvement over the last week. He practiced every single day this last week for at least 40 minutes. I feel like practice schedules really are the key to success.

I got my finite math homework done and even made a video that I had been thinking about making for awhile. 

This is a video I made about prozac. I was meaning to do an updated video about anti-depressants because I had previously made one about Wellbutrin... which turned out to be pretty awful. 

peace.

RadCon tomorrow, stress free and relaxed.

Hello!

 I'm excited because RadCon is tomorrow! Well, technically it started today, and I really could have gone had I planned earlier. I plan to go home tomorrow morning. Originally I was planning to leave this evening because I thought Abe and I were hanging out but he ended up going home. He's going to go snowboarding this weekend. It wasn't a flakiness situation, and in all fairness we hung out yesterday so it doesn't matter.

Lol. I ended up having a very nice valentines day, actually.

Abe came over after he got out of his chemistry lab. I was so flattered, he got me a rose and chocolates. Ha ha I drank a monster that evening and had the weird idea to cut the rose and stick it in the can. I can get a little weird when I'm home alone. 

Uhm yes, Kirsten and I have not talked for a week. Woops. I give up guys, ha ha. It was so funny, I talked to Samantha on the phone earlier and when I told her I hadn't talked to my roomate in a week she's like "WHAT?" But luckily it hasn't affected me what-so-ever because she never really talks to me anyway. Like we have zero communication unless I talk to her first. To prove this point this week I saw if I didn't talk to her at all if she would talk to me. She didn't. The only time we talked is when I told her I was buying butter at the store. 

I can understand why she might not like me. I haven't been the absolute friendliest, I've had people over, practiced guitar for hours on end... etc. Speaking of which I might as well play once more. I invited this one girl named Ashley over that I'd met at a party I'd been to with Abe. I haven't gotten a response from her on it yet, but I'd really like it if she did come hang out with me. Tomorrow I'm going home, gonna see Katelynn and go to radcon-- hopefully have a blast. I'm going to make it a blast regardless of the circumstances. 

No stressing out about stupid shit for me anymore. I've grown to appreciate the time I get to spend not studying and try to have fun. I've grown to relax a lot more and I feel myself starting to enjoy my life again. For awhile there I was so depressed but many things have changed and my mood feels elevated. 

I had a good week academically too. I studied econ for a good chunk of time twice and figured out the material for my finite math class. I think I did okay on the test today and I thought I was going to bomb it because I literally didn't get the material until last night. 

Four more weeks of classes people! Until finals week that is. I don't think I'm going to have any finals this quarter. I have a research paper to do for my English class. I am also very pleased that I completed my synthesis last night without problems. Hardly anyone was in class today for peer reviews but me and the Mormon guy that sits in front of me got through it no problem and got checked off for full credit. I now have to think about a controversial issue to write about for my research paper. Because I had no trouble writing my last persuasive paper, the research paper shouldn't be that difficult.  

Yeah, Ashley went home this weekend, too. Nothing was meant to happen tonight for some reason. Maybe I should go to bed early and get a really solid night sleep because tomorrow is going to be so hectic. I'm going to leave early tomorrow morning. I plan on hanging out with Katelynn during the day then going to Radcon at about 3 or 4'. That will give me enough time to see everyone, hang out, yadda yadda.

Alrighty goodnight everyone.

peace. 

Forgot about Valentines day.

Felt it was necessary to write. I had a minor panic attack a minute ago. On the bright side that was the first one I'd taken all month because of the Prozac. Tomorrow I have to run to Rite aid and get a refill on that. I think the panic attack was brought on by starting to do research for my English paper. It makes me feel panicked because I've somehow started to dread English papers.

Tonight my goal is to get a good start on it though. I studied economics for 45 min as well as my finite but I barely got a dent in the homework. I'm always a day behind in that class. I've figured out what I needed to know in yesterday's class but have really no clue what I'm doing with today's homework. Finite is a somewhat annoying subject. I've been working hard in that class to keep up but over the past couple weeks I've found it more difficult. I think it just gets that way at the end of the quarter, I'm very fortunate that I don't have to take the final.

I got registered for my classes today! I'm taking Carbaugh again for macroeconomics. Why try to change what's not broken, I'm doing really well in his class and his lecture, notes and tests are very straightforward. There's no surprises which are the kind of classes I try to register for. For statistics I'm taking a high rated professor named Sipic. I'm lucky this professor is highly rated because there was only one option... My classes are from 9-10, then an hour break, then 12-12:50. That's all I'm currently signed up for because I am  still a pre-business major and cannot sign up for 300 level classes.

The way things are going, and if I don't choose to take classes in Summer 2014, I will graduate after Fall 2014. That is seven quarters total here in order to get my degree, and after Spring quarter I will be a senior and will have all of my pre-requisites done. I'm really proud of myself for working this hard up to this point. It's taken daily study to get the grades that I want and with the struggle that I went through at the beginning of the year with depression and anxiety I'm satisfied with what I've done so far.

Oh! By the way, you guys might think this is funny. I forgot about valentines day.

Chocolate ganache looks like this. 

I mean I knew it was this week because of RadCon-- which I'm driving home for Saturday morning. But I didn't even take the time to check the calendar to see what day it was on. My friend Reina gave me a valentines chocolate today and I didn't even realize it was tomorrow. It was very sweet of Reina to do this by the way.


Anyway just now I checked the calendar and Valentines day is indeed tomorrow. Woops. I'm not doing anything that I know of. I do have an English paper draft that's due on Friday that I'm going to get started on tonight. I ate dinner at 4:30 so I'm getting hungry again. Waiting for Kristin to get out of the kitchen so I can go fix something. We haven't talked in about four days.

I'm pretty content with how things are going lately. I haven't talked to Jessie in my econ class either and our relationship has like... reverted back to being strangers, excuse my friend but it's pretty bizarre. I don't really care though, just like with Kristin I'm not going to push it. If she wants to talk to me, cool, I don't care. If she doesn't want to I don't care. I've actually made some friends so I'm feeling a lot less isolated here which has taken the edge off overall.

So yeah. No plans for valentines day, but I think I'll probably see Abe at some point tomorrow-- maybe. He suggested we hang out before he goes to work. We only recently met eachother so doing something for valentines day would be awkward. I don't know what direction anything is going with us but I enjoy his company and I think he's cute.

peace. 

Good luck came to me!! My new business!

Hmm, my sleeping schedule is currently a little out of balance. A couple days ago Abe and I hung out and we stayed up really late and since then I've been drinking coffee in the late afternoon and even took a nap today. I feel like it will benefit me tonight when I start studying.

My guitar practicing is done. I did a solid hour and a half, 40 minutes of which was on guitar pro itself because things have gotten a bit more serious since I've last written.

I am now a teacher!!!

You guys might remember when I wanted to have my own guitar teaching business here at school and felt discouraged and gave it up by my birthday after not getting any response to my flyers and had fixed up all the supplies (manila folders, handouts, etc...) and they had just been sitting there for the past few months. Yesterday I met up with Bruce and asked if he wanted to have his first guitar lesson. Bam, not only does he get his first free lesson but his friend checked out his status and I was able to give him the free introductory lesson as well. I think there is a good chance they will continue to be students with me. 

This is Hassan. He is a Saudi Arabian. I had watched a documentary about Saudi Arabia recently and I told him at first that I did not know about the country (which I really did think before I'd remembered I'd watched the documentary). Then I remembered that Saudi Arabia controls a great amount of oil in the world, they're a very rich country, and that many woman are Muslim and choose to wear the niqab and/or abaya. Apparently this was enough to impress someone of their knowledge of Saudi Arabia, even though I had not even known the people there speak Arabic. 

Anyway he's going to be a great student, he listened very carefully to everything I had to say, put in really good effort with alternate picking, and he even texted me a question today so he's practicing. I am also giving my friend Bruce lessons but he will not be able to obtain his guitar until this Wednesday. Once he starts I have a very high amount of confidence that he's going to excel on the guitar as well. 

Alright I have homework to do.. it's getting late and I haven't done any. 

peace. 

Chinese New Year

I feel an overwhelming sense of happiness and contentment today. Yesterday was such a grand day and even if today's starting out kind of slow because I have to get a little work done today feels like a fine day to be alive.

Yesterday was the Chinese New Years Eve! My friend Wei invited me to come help with making jiaozi and celebrate with the other Chinese graduate students. I was so flattered to be invited. I actually showed up at the multi-purpose room a half an hour before he did so it was slightly awkward initially. They were very friendly and forthcoming though, I felt very welcome to enjoy the experience. 

New Years is a huge holiday in China. Wei told me that in Chinese mythology at the end of the year an evil energy (or a demon, I can't remember) resides in the world and on New Year fireworks are launched in the air and loud drums are banged on to scare away that bad energy and begin with a fresh start. Wei also told me about the city of Beijing where you can see the Forbidden city, the Ming dynasty's tomb and eat traditional Chinese food at the restaurants. I've decided that if I were to go to China, I'd want to tour Beijing. I have no interest in Shanghai because it's just a huge city and I feel that would be overwhelming. 

I mean I know being in China in general would be a paranormal experience for me. It would take a lot of courage for me to go into another country, but I definitely intend to do so someday. 

Wei also showed me some very sweet videos and pictures of his family back home. He has a wife and a three year old daughter, she's so cute! 

Last night was also fun because I went to a party at Bruce's house. Met quite a few chill people, drank some hard apple cidar, had a wonderful time. I did get pretty drunk though surprisingly enough didn't get sick today. I suck at Kings Cup. Honestly I suck at all drinking games. 

lol, lovely. Yeah it was a great day overall-- even got some studying in and played my guitar for two hours, and I feel great

peace. 

Tacky is fun.

Here, some tacky yet admittedly somewhat pretty "artwork" from a facebook app.

On nights light tonight with no real responsibilities facebook browsing is always entertaining. 

Here's another one, whee!

Anyway, I could have gone out tonight but decided not too because I had a really bad headache today and a runny nose and if I go out I know I could easily wear myself out and get that bad cold that's been going around that I've managed to dodge somehow. So after my classes ended I've been at the apartment for the most part, aside from my last counselling session that I attended at 4. 

After the "Pathways" group counselling sessions I was debating on if I wanted to attend the follow up. Today it definitely didn't feel nessasary. I was in overall pretty good spirits after this week, even if this wasn't a fantastic week for me academically. I did okay (81%) on my econ quiz, I probably did the worst I've done so far on a finite quiz today so I'm going to re-do some homework to better prepare for next week tomorrow, and I know I did pretty crummy on that english essay. So tomorrow I intend to get some work done before going to Bruce's kickback thing. I plan to drink a little there but it's not going to be an all night ordeal for me because of my health. I have a bit of a rule against drinking two nights and a row. I always feel like such crap after I drink the previous night that it messes me up almost the entire next day. 

And I knew that if I went out tonight and did get icky feeling tomorrow I definitely wouldn't want to go to Bruce's party, which would be lame as hell. I take pride in sticking to my plans. 

Abe is the one that invited me out this evening. He's out there having a good time somewhere, ha ha. I feel good about my night. I made some major progress on my recital piece from using guitar pro for about 20 minutes of the almost three hours I practiced. I'm thinking I'm going to work out for awhile, then take a shower, then probably practice guitar again and maybe play sims. I don't think I'll be able to go to sleep early tonight but it's Friday so I shouldn't have too. 

I'm just taking this night to enjoy myself because I know I've got a tough week ahead so I might as well make things easier for myself and get prepared this weekend. 

Back to facebook browsing.

peace. 

Should be easy to sleep tonight

Ha ha, this is a picture Reina took yesterday and posted today. 

The last couple days have been exhausting for me so this picture already feels like it was taken a week ago. I finally got that horrible critique paper done-- which I had to pretty much entirely re-do from scratch because my first attempt at it was an absolute fail. Good thing we did peer reviews otherwise I would have been in for a rude awakening. Granted I don't think my paper that I wrote is outstanding by any means but it at least follows the assignment guidelines. 

Today I also had an econ quiz which was a little stressful because I haven't been keeping up with my econ studying as well as the first part of the quarter. I'm happy to say that I did barely pull a B on that quiz (I got 4 wrong, so 81%). Tomorrow I've got a finite quiz that I'm pretty prepared for and spent a solid hour studying for tonight. 

I haven't been playing guitar as much as I'd like too... Now that I know the precise day of the recital however and will be starting a new week tomorrow I'm feeling good about using guitar pro this week. That's basically what Jacob told me at our lesson tonight. He's like, "You've got the right piece now, it matches the one on guitar pro, break it up into little chunks and keep working on it." This week I didn't get nearly as much time to practice as I would have liked too but that's how it goes when it gets to this point in the quarter.  It starts getting more difficult. After tomorrow I'm pretty sure there'll be four more weeks of class. 

At least I'm done with accounting, ha ha. Any time I complain about this quarter I think of how much MORE stressful last quarter was. Last quarter that accounting homework would take me at least an hour and a half a day. I'm thinking statistics is going to be just as hard. Maybe I'll pick up the text early and start looking it over during spring break.. whatever it takes to make this class easier on myself. I also of course have to make sure I register early to get a decent professor. 

I had to do some reading for english tonight, too, but after spending hours on that paper my brain feels completely fried. I'm back to drinking coffee again, by the way. Wasn't doing that for a couple weeks but I'm back to drinking it again. I've been kind of getting back to feeling "Normal" again regardless of the fact that I'm here. For a long time I didn't feel like myself because I was so pessimistic about this place but things have been improving. 

Getting the hell out of my apartment has helped a lot. I don't have a job, though, and I'm kind of nervous to check my balance because I've been eating away my student loan money. Surc food is so f'ing expensive but I've really liked hanging out with Bruce and Trent this week and have met a lot of new people just by hanging around there. Just having two people that I feel comfortable around has made a world of difference for me. I was trying to make friends with girls when I first got here but I've gradually given up. I just feel more comfortable around guys generally; or at least they're easier to hang out with. 

My roommate and I still don't talk, really. I'm sure it's predominantly my fault. I haven't been as friendly as I could have but I still have difficulty talking to her for some reason. My friend Abe has come over a couple nights and he usually talks to her but I can't get into the brief conversations. 

Jessy and I have stopped talking. We don't walk to finite together because I've been walking to Abe instead. Honestly he's more entertaining to talk too, Jessy and I don't really click and since we saw eachother at that party it's been kind of awkward. She's started sitting next to this guy she knows in our finite class. This guy always wears really trendy looking clothes, blegh. Not my thing. I don't know why, I can't take a person seriously if they seem to take way too much time coordinating their outfits. Maybe because it's something that doesn't concern me what so ever. 

I like the way I dress though, honestly. I feel like when I'm ready and have more time I'll incorporate more into my look but for now it's so comfortable just being simple. 

peace.  

Little enlightenment from king of the hill.

Propane at Mega-lo Mart? YOU BASTARDS!

I hadn't watched Death of a propane salesman before for some reason. It's the second episode to a two-part story, the first part being the last episode of Season 2. Anyway there was something really enlightening that Kahn said in this episode. He told a story during Buckley's funeral that went sort of like this:

Once there was a man that was running through the forest being chased by a tiger. The tiger cornered him to a cliff which he then slipped off and tumbled down to a branch where he clung for his life. He looked down and saw another tiger at the bottom of cliff. He knew there was no escape and he would die weather he climbed back up or slipped back down. When he looked in front of him he saw a strawberry. He reached out and ate it, and it was the greatest strawberry he'd ever tasted.

Okay, this didn't make sense to me at first but after watching the episode I realized what it meant. It basically means that whether you look back or look forward you're going to die someday, but if you look at what's in front of you and enjoy life that's the best thing you can do.

This was sort of enlightening to me. As you guys know, I have a tendency to stress out quite a bit. Fear can be overwhelming at times and confronting your own personal fear of death can be comforting. I feel like everyone fears it in one way or another but try to push the thought aside as much as possible. It's enlightening things like this that can help you confront how you feel.

I've learned a lot of good mind flexibility techniques at this counselling session called Pathways that I got a lot out of. It's helped me think a lot more positively so things have been improving here from a day to day basis. Just at the beginning of January I was feeling extremely negative like things weren't going to change here but gradually I've been making changes to lower the amount of stress in my life, regardless of the circumstances.

I'm excited to say that there's officially just a month left in classes. The official last day of class is on the 8th which is a little more than a month away. I'm not going to have finals in my Finite math class or my economics class (that is unless I completely bomb an economics test and want to take the redemption final which I'm hoping I won't have to do if I continue to work hard at it). My finite math class I definitely won't have a final because I've been one of the study group leaders.

English has become the biggest pain this quarter because in some ways it's taken me a little while to get back into the swing of writing/reading a lot which is going to be nice when it's over. I've got quite a bit of work to do for that class-- I'm completely rewriting that critique paper. The first time I did it to that awful politics article was a complete fail. I read a couple other students papers in class and realized what exactly the assignment was asking for and felt kind of stupid. I've decided to change articles to one I know more about. I didn't know we were allowed to use the article because I haven't been paying attention in class very well. She must of mentioned it like 3 times but my mind was just out of it last week and I didn't care. As you guys know, Monday of last week I hadn't slept all night and Tuesday night was spent throwing up from that stomach flu garbage. I got two hours of sleep, hadn't slept a solid night in over 48 hours... That and not eating takes a tole on your psyche, last week wasn't my best.

This morning I felt like I had a bit of a cold. I'm getting really tired so I'm going to go to bed.

peace. 

Pokemon Colosseum and partyyyy, big updates.

Hey, damn I haven't been on in a good while. Last week things got a little hectic. I thought I was going to have some major issues with insomnia but it turned out I just had a very bad stomach bug that was making it hard to sleep. I'm happy to say the wind has calmed way down, too, so no more annoying wind noise at all hours.

It's 4:25 pm, probably going to start making dinner when I finish writing this. Things have gotten better since I've last written to you. When my stomach problems improved I had an easier Pathways session on Thursday. The one that I'd gone to on Tuesday I was shaking nearly the entire time because of my upset stomach and I'm sure I appeared on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I sort of was, considering I had barely eaten anything in days nor had I slept in 48 hours. I'd talked to my mom on the phone and she told me to drink one of the smoothies from the surc to at least get something in my system then try to sleep. I had a pretty hard night of tossing and turning but I was actually INCREDIBLY thankful when I just got a few hours of sleep. I was so nervous on the third night of not sleeping that there was something actually wrong. So yes, Thursday ended up being a really good day.

This is Trent. On Thursday I decided to eat in the surc and after grabbing my food asked to sit with him. He was of course fine with it, and we started joking around and he actually made me laugh for the first time here in quite awhile. Like I haven't met many people with a sense of humor I can really get but he's pretty hilarious. His friend Bruce also walked up and we all talked for about a half hour or so. I was really happy to have met some new friends and we decided we'd start having lunch together more often. We actually had lunch together today and some other people sat down with us. Trent knows a lot of people because he's been going to school here for a few years. He's a history major and he's from South carolina.

Then Friday was VERY interesting... 

At lunch I sat with Daniel H. and met a few of his friends too. I ended up playing pokemon Colosseum with Daniel and his friend Tavis. Not gonna lie, my inner child was so excited I couldn't believe we were playing this. We had to walk all over the place to pick up the N64 and the game but I plan on hanging out with Tavis again. He was really fun to play retro video games with. I hope we can do that again. 

Also not that this is anything to brag about but I won alllll my battles. Woops! 

That night a guy from my economics class named Abe invited both me and Jessy (the girl I sit next to) to a party that was happening at his friends house. I'd given Abe by number so that he could get ahold of me about it. Originally I thought I was going to go with Jessy and her friend but I'm now happy I didn't because coordinating plans with them could have been really difficult. They didn't show up until 11:30. By then it was packed and I was pretty drunk on hard cidar. I byob, I can't stand beer or shots. 

Alright, not the most flattering picture of me, I'm aware.

This was a picture posted by this girl Emily that I met at the party, along with this other chill girl named Elizabeth. Me and Emily danced a LOT, ironically enough because I had told Abe earlier that I didn't dance at all. We were like the only ones dancing and other girls would jump in and out but we didn't really care. There were a bunch of people funneling in and it was getting so packed. 

Brendan actually showed up there at around 11 or so. I kind of closed mouth smiled and he smiled back. It only felt a little awkward having him there. It actually felt more awkward when Jessy showed up and I felt like her friend was giving me "looks." I was like, alrighty then that just sucked my fun a bit. Abe drove me home, which probably wasn't the greatest idea in the world... I think next time I'll just walk, my parents would absolutely kill me if they knew, even if my place is right down the road.

And then I went home this weekend! Had a really nice night with Katelynn on Saturday and even stopped at Samantha's that evening. Samantha and I had a pretty good chat, and I left to Katelynn's around 6:30 to go pick her up. She spent the night at my place and actually stuck around the next day until 12:30 when Al picked her up which is pretty unusual for us. She usually goes home first thing in the morning because when she's at other people's house any little noise wakes her up.

Unfortunately for her this time my Dad had the  TV on all night long (wasn't watching it of course) and it was blaring show tunes. She didn't get any sleep Saturday night but we still had a nice time hanging out, doing what we do. 

Sunday... SUPER BOWL Sunday. Like I really care about the superbowl. It's just like the Grammys or any other big television event that I don't watch, it's just noisy and I always end up walking out of the room if I try to watch it because I get bored easily. I was working on this atrocious "critique" paper that took my mom and I hours of hard work and determination. It was such a nightmare to write. Luckily I've got to peer review from one of the more intelligent students in my class and he chose the same article as me. Hopefully I can get enough inspiration from that to fine tune, extend and edit my essay. Also, note to self, the bibliography part is copied from the back of the coursepack.. That's what he told me today.. I have to add my MLA bibliography to my final draft which I think is due on Friday. 

I've got an economics quiz this Thursday that I'm going to start studying for tonight. I think I'm going to put together one of those weekly assignment sheets. I've been feeling pretty calm all day and don't feel intimidated by doing it, which is why I haven't done my goal sheets in a couple weeks. The social interaction has helped me a lot.

peace.